J_Thomas2 comments on Anthropomorphic Optimism - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2008 08:17PM

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Comment author: J_Thomas2 05 August 2008 04:12:13PM -1 points [-]

"If there is an act such that one believed that, conditional on one’s performing it, the world had a 0.00000000000001% greater probability of containing infinite good than it would otherwise have (and the act has no offsetting effect on the probability of an infinite bad), then according to EDR one ought to do it even if it had the certain side‐effect of laying to waste a million human species in a galactic‐scale calamity.

The assumption is that when you lay waste to a million human species the bad that is done is finite.

Is there solid evidence for that? If there's any slightest chance that it will result in infinite bad, then the problem is much more complicated.

There has to be not the 0.00000000000001% probability that your evil might be infinite, before this reasoning makes sense.